Now or Never·First PersonAfter her parents’ divorce, Melanie Chambers thought marriage was a raw deal for women. Then, she met someone who helped her realize they could together redefine what marriage looks like.I’ve come around from thinking it was a raw deal for womenMelanie Chambers · for CBC First Person · Posted: Sep 25, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours agoMelanie Chambers, right, and Paul Reinis cut their wedding cake in 2024. (Submitted by Melanie Chambers)This is a First Person column by Melanie Chambers, who lives in Rossland, B.C. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, please see the FAQ.”Melanie now, Melanie forever, Chambers now, but not forever.” My dad had these cute sayings when I was growing up. He also said that if I ate too much sugar, I’d grow hair on my chest. Either way, I believed him. Noted: Avoid sugar; get married.Growing up in the ’80s, we lived in what Mom called her forever house. The gables on the windows were reminiscent of Anne of Green Gables with the Atlantic Ocean just a skip down our backyard.Mom was also a career woman. After work, she’d pull pork chops out of the freezer while sliding out of her business suit and into her leg warmers. Back then, I idealized my parents’ marriage. But when I was twelve, they divorced and my world changed. Mom and I moved into a soulless apartment in Dartmouth, N.S. Dad moved three hours away. Our visits became sporadic. Compared to my girlfriends whose parents were all married, I felt a sting of shame and loneliness. I was the only person I knew from a divorced family. Post divorce, dad thrived. He got a big promotion at work and remarried. Meanwhile, Mom hosted Mary Kay makeup parties to cover rent. She went to gay dance clubs to avoid being harassed by lonely men. I watched her struggles and came to see marriage as a raw deal for women. It became their entire identity. As the daughter of a single mom, the blissful white wedding dress and all the accompanying trappings seemed like a silly girl’s naïve dream. Chambers in her Dartmouth High Grade 10 photo. (Submitted by Melanie Chambers)Much later, as an emerging travel writer, I didn’t know how I could fit my restless aspirations into a traditional marriage. “You travel to escape,” said one partner, implying that I came from a broken home. And yet, travelling alone seemed like the only time I could be myself. Many of my partners wanted to change or fix me. Compared to their corporate 9-to-5 jobs, I worked odd hours, freelanced and travelled months at a time for work. My aesthetic was often too childish or whimsical for them. One partner refused to let me hang a Snoopy painting or paint the walls orange: “It’s bad for the resale value of the house.” In my mid-30s, I considered that maybe I should be married. Most of my girlfriends were doing it. Maybe my exes were right: maybe I was broken? What was wrong with me? And yet, marriage never felt like the right choice.In my early 40s, after a relationship that ended in an amicable break, I saw many girlfriends go through messy divorces. It always seemed the mothers struggled with less money, fewer privileges and more responsibilities than the men. It clarified my stance: marriage was the pits. WATCH | How the rise of ‘manosphere’ content is affecting some marriages: Misogynistic content is winning over married men and leading to divorces: lawyerSome women say their partners have changed for the worse, and they partly blame the ‘manosphere’ content they’re consuming online. One family lawyer says he’s seeing it brought up as a reason for divorce, and so are his colleagues.Then, I met another free spirit. A seemingly conservative engineer, Paul opened my eyes to things I was missing in my life. When he took me to my first techno dance, I loved the energy and wild sparkly costumes. “I never knew this existed,” I said to Paul, as I bounced from stranger to stranger introducing myself. When he took me to his favourite goth bar, I was hesitant. But when we befriended someone wearing fishnet stockings and hot pink shorts, I fell in love with Paul even more. Here was someone who loved the idiosyncrasies of people — the weird and wonderful bits that made people different. He extended that openness to me. When I told Paul that I would be travelling, sometimes for months or that I needed to go dancing alone sometimes or that I preferred my own room in the house, he didn’t always understand, but he proclaimed: “Mel, let your freak flag fly.” Chambers, left, and Reinis enjoy dressing up for Halloween and other events. They also both mountain bike together, such as when they raced together in South Africa. (Submitted by Melanie Chambers, Em Gatland)After a decade living together, when we were celebrating my 50th birthday in an industrial space of graffitied walls and blue lights streaming across his face on the dance floor, in front of our community of friends, I asked Paul to marry me. It felt rebellious. I wasn’t waiting for a man to ask me. I had changed the narrative. He wasn’t entirely surprised. Months earlier, I was taking stock of my life, considering all the places I still wanted to visit and the adventures I still wanted to experience. I realized I wanted a day to celebrate Paul and me. And, for the first time in a long while, I wasn’t cynical about marriage. I knew we could cultivate what we wanted. In our house, no one tries to wear “the pants.” We do our own laundry, have separate bank accounts and we don’t always eat the same meals or at the same time. A year later, we had a small ceremony in Paul’s parents’ backyard. Our DJ friends played techno. A few friends wanted me to wear white, but I felt more comfortable in a blue vintage beaded burlesque dress with a red fascinator in my hair. And yet, I asked my dad to walk me “down the aisle” — or in this case, through the dining room — to Paul. It was a bit of old, with our new concept of marriage. And I knew it would make my dad happy. Left image: Chambers, right, was given away by her dad, James Chambers, on her wedding day. It’s a wedding tradition she never thought she’d embrace. Right image: The bride and groom doing the twist on the dance floor of their reception. Chambers wore a blue wedding dress with a red fascinator — something that felt more authentic to her than a traditional white wedding dress. (Submitted by Melanie Chambers)We recently celebrated our first-year wedding anniversary. I hate to admit this: I thought marriage might improve us, like the old adage that having a baby might fix a couple’s problems. It did not, but for the sake of peace in our marriage, I had to let go of ideas that I could control parts of Paul or fix him — his punctuality or, sometimes, his procrastination. I had to accept all of him, too. So, I suppose, in a way, it did improve us. We have something tangible to protect, something bigger than ourselves. It took me until middle age to let go of deeply embedded cultural and personal ideas of marriage. Maybe I just didn’t know how to ask for those things before? Paul sometimes calls me “wifey” and we laugh. My marriage is part of my identity, but certainly not all of it. Chambers, left, and Reinis hanging out together after a family Thanksgiving dinner in Toronto. (Submitted by Melanie Chambers)Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? We want to hear from you. Here’s more info on how to pitch to us.ABOUT THE AUTHORMelanie Chambers is a journalist and writing instructor at Western University, where she teaches online while living in Rossland, B.C. She’s working on a memoir about female sexuality.
I was dead set against marriage. But on my 50th birthday, I proposed to the love of my life
